Information AboutPrototaxites |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT PROTOTAXITES | |
| fungi | |
| devonian life | |
| silurian life | |
| fossils | |
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This organism would have been the tallest living thing in its day, towering over the three-feet-tall Plant s and the Invertebrate s that were the only other land-dwelling life. mass or Lichen . The first suggestion that ''Prototaxites'' was a fungus occurred in . Retrieved 2007-04-24 . In 2001 , after 20 years of research, Francis Hueber, of the National Museum Of Natural History , published a paper reviving the concept that, based on its morphology, ''Prototaxites'' was a fungus. This idea was faced with denial and severe skepticism until, in 2007 , isotopic analyses by a team including Hueber and C. Kevin Boyce of the University Of Chicago ('' Geology '', 2007) concluded that ''Prototaxites'' was a giant fungus. It compared the combination of Carbon Isotopes in neighboring plants (all plants get their carbon from the air, and therefore have the same Isotope combinations in a given era) to the towering, treetrunk-like fossils, and found the latter to have a very different, and inconsistent, ratio. This reflects the fact that ''Prototaxites'' were Heterotroph s growing on a wide range of substrates, such as the remains of vascular plants, Bryophyte s or other organisms. REFERENCES SEE ALSO
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